They were the unsung heroines of the space race, quintessentialAmericanhousewives expected to stand by their men, smile to order and declare themselves "Happy, proud and thrilled" as their husbands were strapped aboard towering columns of explosives and rocketed to glory.

Poised, serene and flawlessly groomed, they were feted as the epitome of domestic perfection, undergoing a transformation from ordinary military spouses to the First Ladies of Space alongside husbands whose bravery in the face of death-defying risks and lunar ambitions knew no bounds.

Yet behind the thrills, the glamour, the celebrity status, ticker-tape parades, glossy magazine photo-shoots and receptions with monarchs and presidents, life for the wives of Nasa's pioneering Mercury, Gemini and Apollo era astronauts was also a harrowing, fearful and at times scandalous existence.

Chronicled for the first time in a new book, The Astronaut Wives Club, the story of the women behind Nasa's elite space explorers of the 1950s to 1970s shows that it was not just the menfolk who were expected to have the Right Stuff.

Under pressure to play a cool hand and live up to the gold standard the public and Nasa expected of them, some had to turn blind eyes to their husbands' infidelities, sweep domestic strife under the carpet and put on shows of marital harmony "like Stepford Wives" to protect the astronauts' images and careers.

"We all tried to be so calm and so cool and everything," said Jane Dreyfus, who divorced from the third man on the Moon, the late Pete Conrad, in 1988. "But we were a far cry from Stepford Wives."

Some turned to tranquilisers - or, in the case of Susan Borman, wife of Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, alcohol - to help them cope with the extreme dread of seeing their husbands sent into space, or the trauma of seeing marriages slipping away.

Only by forming a sisterhood they called the Astronaut Wives Club - motto "Proud, Happy, Thrilled" - did they pull one another through the challenges and anxieties of being married to America's first space heroes.

"If you think going to the Moon is hard, try staying at home," said Barbara Cernan, the wife of Gene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and the last man to walk on the Moon.

Mr Cernan, addressing the book's official launch event in Houston, choked back tears as he admitted: "If it weren't for the wives who committed their lives to what we were doing, I don't think we would have ever gotten to the Moon."

The space race began in October 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first ever man-made satellite, infuriating the US and deepening Cold War hostilities.

Two years later, on the orders of President Dwight Eisenhower, Nasa selected its very first astronauts. Known as the Mercury Seven, all were military test pilots with genius-level intellects. Tasked with beating the Soviet Union to putting a human in Earth orbit, they were seen by their country as models of integrity and valiant ambassadors of anti-Communism.

Thrust suddenly into the spotlight, the wives were considered by women across America as "seven glorious women they could look up to and emulate," said author Lily Koppel. Their family lives were spread across the pages of Life magazine, and their home-making skills, fashion choices, hairstyles and lipstick colours scrutinised and copied by those who saw them as perfect cookie-cutter American wives and mothers without a hint of domestic turbulence.

Yet of the 30 astronauts recruited into the Mercury Project and the successor Gemini and Apollo programmes - which ultimately set man on the Moon in 1969 - the marriages of only seven survived intact.

One of them was over before Mercury even began; Gordon Cooper's wife Trudy had left him in 1958, four months before Nasa selected him for the programme, because, as one of the other spouses would reveal, "he was screwing another man's wife". Driven by the prospect of riding an Atlas rocket into space, and realising he needed a "loving wife" to fit Nasa's requirements of him, he persuaded his wife into a reunion.They split for good in the late 1960s.

The marriage of Mercury Seven astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space, and his wife Louise - nicknamed "Saint Louise" for her composure - was among the few that survived, despite dalliances that included him attending swingers parties and picking up a prostitute in a Mexican border town during a Nasa trip to California prior to his 1961 mission.

A livid John Glenn, a fellow Mercury Seven astronaut who went on to become the first American to orbit the Earth, was called on by Nasa to talk a newspaper out of running the story and incriminating photographs.

"As John saw it, any astronaut who couldn't keep his 'pants zipped' threatened to ruin everything and squash America's opportunity to beat the Russians, not only in space but on the grounds of moral superiority. They all had a responsibility to the country to be the wholesome heroes they were sold as," said Ms Koppel.

Mrs Shepard had feared prior to her husband being selected for America's debut space flight that his penchant for women could ruin his career. Until he gave up his womanising, she believed "he'd be stuck on earth" - yet when others asked why she tolerated his fooling around, she told them: "Because I'm the one he really loves."

Many of the wives knew Cape Canaveral and its resort of Cocoa Beach as "that harlot of a town", where a number of the astronauts kept a "Cape Cookie" - a girlfriend on the side.

Don Eisele, who flew aboard Apollo 7 in 1968, was served with the first "space divorce" by his wife Harriet upon his return, having endured his infidelity Cape Cookies for years out of a sense of patriotic duty.

Whenever she had voiced her fears to him that he was being unfaithful, he told her she was crazy. "If I'm crazy, I should see a psychiatrist," she told him, only for him to answer: "You can't. I'll lose my job."

The wife of Apollo 1 astronaut Gus Grissom, who died in a fire during a launch pad exercise at Cape Canaveral in 1967, knew that he was seeing other women but tried to blot it out of her mind. "I'm not saying that Gus didn't have girlfriends.I just tried not to think about those possibilities," she admitted.

When Pat White, the widow of Apollo 1 victim Ed White, tried to take an overdose after his death, the Astronaut Wives Club rallied around to help keep the news from the public. She went on to remarry, but killed herself in 1991, still haunted by what happened.

Buzz Aldrin could be "heartbreakingly cold" towards his first wife, Joan, to whom he once gave a monkey as a Christmas present. The monkey would bare his teeth, make obscene gestures and dance around mocking her. "Buzz, I've had it. It's either the money or me. Somebody's leaving," his wife told him. She was met with a silent look from her husband that appeared to say "Well, what are you waiting for?" Their marriage ultimately crumbled following his return from the Moon in 1969, when he sank into depression and alcoholism.

Neil Armstrong, who preceded Aldrin on the lunar surface, was "emotionally unavailable" to his first wife. "It was hard for them to come home," said Faye Stafford, the former wife of astronaut Tom Stafford, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 10 in 1969. "Who could ever compete with the Moon? I was lucky if I could come in second."

Many of the astronaut wives cooperated with the book. "I see them as America's first reality stars. Their country looked to them to hold up the public relations arm of the early space programme and the feeling was that if they did not, their men may not go into space or to the Moon," said Ms Koppel.

"Their story is kind of The Right Stuff meets Mad Men, with a little bit of Desperate Housewives thrown in. Decades have passed and they finally felt they could be more honest with themselves and the public about their experience."